Gemstone Coloration and Dyeing – Table of Contents

This page contains the Table of Contents for the book “Gemstone Coloration and Dyeing” written by George W. Fischer. Click on the links to be directed to the respective pages.

This book is the culmination of some twenty-five years of personally supported research on the use of inorganic chemicals to induce color and inclusions in gemstone. Prior attempts to use dyes for gemstone colorations had proved very disappointing.

The fact that native color in gemstone is derived from the presence of compounds of certain metals as inorganic components (impurities) of the gemstone suggested that the inorganic salts of these metals (dyes are organic [1]) might serve well to induce color where color is lacking or needs enhancing. A brief account of Easy Ways to Color Agate,in The Agates of North America [2] was encouraging. Then, in 1963,a series of articles by John Sinkakankus, C.G. appeared in the Lapidary Journal under the title,Color Changes in Gemstones. One of these articles dealt with the impregnation of gemstone with chemical coloring agents and further confirmed the probability that inorganic salts of certain metals would be very effective to induce color in gemstone.

In the ensuing years, I have conducted many hundreds of experiments on chemical coloration of gemstone, using dozens of chemical compounds to induce color in more than thirty kinds of gemstone. While the great majority of these experiments were more or less failures, the results of those that were successful have been very gratifying, and in some cases, fantastic.

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The primary purpose of this book is to share with other rockhounds and lapidaries the coloring processes I have developed during these years of experimentation. I hope this will open to them, as it has to me, a tremendously rewarding whole new facet and world in this fascinating hobby of rockhounding and the lapidary arts. Then they, too, can experience the thrill of creation in chemically coloring gemstone. In countless instances, the true beauty potential of a piece of gemstone can not be fulfilled until it is subjected to chemical coloration. The inward joy and satisfaction that results from bringing to completion an exquisite cabochon from a slab of gemstone so colored defies my ability to describe it.